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Thursday, 26 April 2018

Yesterday, before a joint session of Congress, the US legislature and executive got the address that it needs to heed but probably didn’t deserve in the parting words of French Prisent Emmanuel Macron, who laid bare a world-view in sharp contrast to what the disengaged, raging nationalist policies of the Trump regime, bromance aside.There being no “Planet B,” Macron urged America to rejoin the Paris Accords and not to withdraw from the Iran nuclear settlement. The spread of fake news (fausses nouvelles) and the atmosphere of distrust it sews is also getting to be a bit much. Macron’s speech happened to fall of the same day in 1960 when Général Charles de Gaulle had the opportunity to convey the same message of friendship and unity to the same audience, and of course follows quite a long tradition of French thinkers mediating on democracy in America—beginning with Alexis de Tocqueville’s travels in the newly-minted republic.